Dungeons of Hinterberg Review

Going on a vacation to slay monsters and solve puzzles in dungeons, never was that much fun! I <3 this game! It has some missable achievements. However, if you’re aware of them it is easy to make sure you don’t miss them. ~25h to completion.

Approximate amount of time to 100%: 25 hours
Estimated achievement difficulty: 2/10
Minimum number of playthroughs needed: 1
Is there a good guide available: I wrote this friendship reward guide and this achievement guide. I wish I had also kept track of where I found the coins but I didn’t 🙁
Multiplayer achievements: No
Missable achievements: Yes, the coin in the beginner’s dungeon is missable, finishing a new dungeon while being tired and you can’t go back into the dungeons after you finished the last one when only using autosave. so make a manual save before attempting/finishing the last dungeon.
Grinding Achievements: No
DLC-Only achievements: No
Speedrun achievements: No
Time-gated achievements: No
RNG-achievements: No
Does difficulty affect achievements: No you can play on easy and still unlock every achievement
Unobtainable/glitched achievements: No

Sometimes you just fall in love at the beginning of a game just with the concept alone already, this game did that for me. Before starting to play Dungeons of Hinterberg I liked the idea and wasn’t blown away by the artwork while I enjoy that it is a different style than we see a lot. However, after the first dungeon, I was already head over heels in love while that dungeon was short, straightforward, and easy. I could see already the potential and how smooth the controls of the game were. How good it felt and a peek into the people you’ll meet during this journey. And the artwork grew on me while playing through the story. It includes so many details and is so well made.

In Dungeons of Hinterberg, you’re on holiday in Hinterberg. Where in other small towns/villages in Austria it might be normal to have winter sports activities while on vacation, Hinterberg is special… in Hinterberg you learn how to use magic and complete dungeons during your vacation. However, it still is a vacation so you can also just take the day off and enjoy a scenic spot and during the evenings you’ll meet with all kinds of different people. And all those things will help you out with getting stronger. Yes, even taking the day off helps you out!

This game reminds me of the “Persona” series combined with “Phantasy Star Online Episode I & II”. The interactions and hangouts you have with the people feel like the social part of the Persona games. With bonus points for not having X amount of in-game time before the world gets destroyed. You can keep going as long as you don’t finish the last dungeon. And the style of the dungeons reminded me somehow of Phantasy Star Online.

In Dungeons of Hinterberg, there are 16 “people” you can get to know better and hang out with. Increasing your friendship level will get you rewards, but the people were so well-written that it was fun as well. I didn’t like everyone, but when getting to know them better I understood where they came from. And it is awesome that there is such a range of personalities. The quiet ones, the social butterflies, the loud ones, the cheesy ones. You will find so many different people in Hinterberg, but all with a story attached to them. For the achievements you don’t have to max out their friendships, which would mean that normally I wouldn’t even go for that. However, I finished almost all of them just to get to know them. I think I spent around 5 extra hours, just to finish most of the friendship levels.

There are 26 Dungeons in Dungeons of Hinterberg. What I enjoyed so much about them is that they weren’t too long, you’ll not spend hours going through the same dungeon, while also being different from each other. The dungeons are scattered over 4 areas in the game and in each area you get 2 skills and only those 2 skills. This made sure that the dungeons weren’t too complex. It has puzzles but you also know that the solution has to be done with one or both of those skills. The first time I got new skills it took a bit of time to get used to them, but it works so well and you always know that one of them has something to do with range.

Another nice thing is everything you do will improve your stats, even relaxing at the spa will in the end help you get stronger so you can get through the dungeons. This way you don’t feel like spending useless time doing something and you can just strategize what is more important to go for at the moment. The rewards from leveling up your friendship levels are so nice as well.

I love how many quality of Life features Dungeons of Hinterberg has. Think about having teleport spots all over the map, so you never have to walk that far after you explore the place the first time. Also seeing chests on the map you found but couldn’t open because not having the key yet is awesome, so you don’t forget them as long as you have interacted with the chest. Another welcome feature is that you can speed up the animation of entering a zone or the switch between afternoon to evening, evening to night ect. And last but not least as it is huge, the game warns you of so many things. “Do you want to spend time with this person, that will take the whole evening” aka “Have you done your shopping before you chose this option” and other warnings like that.

After finishing the story you get the chance to say goodbye to everybody, and this was such a nice feature. I cried so hard during this because it felt really like saying goodbye to them as you learn to know them quite a lot. It was so bittersweet as I was glad happy with the ending and happy to play through this game, but that also meant saying goodbye. They did a great job with how to even include that in your Slaycation. However, there were possible hints as to where the story could go next… so hopefully at some point, we will join up with the main character and go on slaycation in another city!

I give Dungeons of Hinterberg 5 out of 5 stars. Yes, I’m in love with this game!

This review for Dungeons of Hinterberg was written on 17 July 2024, based on the current Steam version of the game which has 41 achievements at the time of writing this review. This information can be outdated, for example, when the developer adds or removes achievements or releases (new) DLC.